Not that this is a real serious thread, but I have major doubts that the revenue from team naming rights would equilibrate to, or exceed, the revenue from trademarked team merchandise sales.

The whole point of the recent lawsuit against the "Redskins" trademark, was to usurp the copyright protection on the name. Doing so would effectively force the Danny to drop the name since he would no longer be raking in the millions in merchandising revenue associated with the Redskins name. As I seem to recall, the Skins are in the top 3 of team merchandise sales along with Pittsburg and Dallas.

Danny won't sell the naming rights to the team under any circumstances, it just doesn't make fiscal sense. Even if eventually the name is un-copyrighted, he'll pick something different and copyright that.

What you say makes sense, unless he can recoup in licensing fees from a "name brand" what he would lose in licensing fees by owning the name. I don't know what the numbers are, so I can't say if that's a likely scenario or not.

Not that this is a real serious thread, but I have major doubts that the revenue from team naming rights would equilibrate to, or exceed, the revenue from trademarked team merchandise sales.

The whole point of the recent lawsuit against the "Redskins" trademark, was to usurp the copyright protection on the name. Doing so would effectively force the Danny to drop the name since he would no longer be raking in the millions in merchandising revenue associated with the Redskins name. As I seem to recall, the Skins are in the top 3 of team merchandise sales along with Pittsburg and Dallas.

Danny won't sell the naming rights to the team under any circumstances, it just doesn't make fiscal sense. Even if eventually the name is un-copyrighted, he'll pick something different and copyright that.

Mc2guy

if they were the walmarts, people would still buy the new jersey's... though there'd obviously be a backlash and losts sales of some sort.

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definitely. i mean regardless of "love" for a team, changing the name would instantly cause people to lose the connection they have with the team. not necessarily making them worse fans, but if the skins had to change their name it would be horrible. its got a LOT of tradition behind it.